What is an NHS service evaluation?
The NHS is continually making changes to its services and care pathways as a result of the introduction of new innovations or the need to generate greater efficiency and/or productivity. The NHS Long Term Plan, for example, refers to the mainstreaming of digitally-enabled care across the NHS which may change modes of delivery of patient care and patient pathways. Evaluations of service or patient pathway changes involve developing an understanding of the costs and benefits of the intervention in comparison with usual care or some other form of comparator. We will typically help to identify the research question and the key economic measures and specify the data to be collected before carrying out analysis and/or developing an economic model.
When do you need to use an NHS service evaluation?
When changes are to be made in the NHS, it is important that they are evaluated robustly to ensure that they are clinically safe, cost-effective and acceptable to patients. NHS service evaluations should ideally happen before the service or pathway changes are fully commissioned but they can also be carried out retrospectively if a service or pathway change has already been commissioned. The outputs of the evaluation can help decision makers to roll a new service out more widely or to continue to commission an existing patient pathway.
How can we help you?
We can help you to:
- Co-design the research question and key economic measures
- Specify and collect relevant data to populate an NHS service evaluation
- Conduct literature reviews to gather evidence on the impact of interventions to include in an analysis or model
- Develop an analysis or construct a simple model in an appropriate software package
- Undertake comprehensive uncertainty analyses
- Prepare a detailed report to accompany the NHS service evaluation
- Present NHS service evaluation findings to internal and external stakeholders